The title says it all really, doesn't it? How many times have you heard a song on the radio, thought "Jesus, that was shite" and then later found out that the origin of said foul sound was under 20 years of age? Quite a few, I'll wager.

The following "artists" (although you realise that I use the term wincingly, and with as much sarcasm and loathing as I can cram in) can all be used to scientifically prove the theory that teenagers make shitty music. (Note that all ages are as of 1st December 1998.)

• Billie
  Age: 16
  Crapness: Very
  Curiously, when searching Yahoo! for the "Billie" fan sites essential to my information gathering (yes folks, I do actually do some background research into these pages. Not much, but some) the first link it threw up was to some pictures of a dog and her friends. Coincidence? Poor search text parsing? Incorrect keywords? I think not. Yahoo! knew what it was doing. Both of Billie's singles that I've heard have been fiercly annoying, although her power is strong, as rather than just attracting the usual crowd of pre-pubescent girls, she also attracts middle-aged, overweight men.

  Fig. 1 - Billie: The wide-mouthed-frog of teen pop stars. She's so ugly that even her offical website only has one picture of her on it.

• Cleopatra
  Age (average): 15
  Crapness: Particularly
  "Comin' atcha!" is their catch-phrase. What, you want more reasoning than that? Okay, did you see them at the MTV awards this year? They were told what to say, and still managed to mess it up. Their every interview is a festival of cringe-inducing woodeness.

• Hanson
  Age (average): 16
  Crapness: Very
  In MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch Hanson won the title of "Most Annoying Band" over the Spice Girls. That tells you something about what we're dealing with here. Also, every single person that I know, upon first seeing or hearing the band, thought that one or more of their number was a girl. That level of evidence just can't be ignored.

  Fig. 2 - I didn't want to hurt my visitors' eyes by putting a picture of Hanson here, so instead I put in this one of a blonde girl. Close enough.

• B*Witched
  Age (average): 18
  Crapness: Extremely
  The best bit about the official B*Witched website is the curious picture of a black cat telling you when the album comes out. Surreal. In a cruel twist of fate B*Witched have already, at their young age, managed to fail in one of their life goals (and I quote): "We don't want to be one dimensional." Ah well, better luck next time girls. B*Witched also fall into that terrible-but-true cliche of being a band from Ireland who put crappy Irish-jiggy bits into their music. You don't hear Garbage having bagpipes in their music, and you don't hear the Manic Street Preachers putting the noise of sheep being anally violated into their music, so why do Irish bands always do this? Finally, I want everyone to say a prayer for one of the girls from B*Witched, as her parents clearly hate her as much as I do, hence they gave her a name which made me laugh aloud when I first read it: Edele Claire Christina Edwina Lynch. What, couldn't they decide or something? Actually, don't be surprised to find B*Witched gather their own section in TIGU, as I'm rapidly building up a great deal of ammunition against them.

• Five
  Age (average): 19
  Crapness: Very
  So pathetically shoddy, that of the 32748 registered fan sites at Yahoo! ("Is he sponsored by Yahoo!" - Wayne) not one of them is dedicated to these shitty plebs. I'm not surprised though, as they're nothing more than five (I presume there're five of them, otherwise what's with the name?) Peter Andre wannabes. And when you dedicate your life to being like Peter Andre you know you're in for a rough ride.

  Fig. 3 - This place is reserved for Five, when I actually find a website that has a picture of them. Which doesn't seem likely since everyone appears to hate them. Ah well, here's a picture of Peter Andre instead, which is probably the next best (or, in this case, worst) thing.

As you can see from the above figures the older a teenage pop star becomes, the more crap they become, until they get to the age of 19, when the impending cross-over into their twenties lessens their annoying ways.

However, it should be noted that the younger a pop star is below the age of thirteen the greater their crapness will be. This increases inversely proportional to age, so an 8 year old pop star will be far more annoying and crap than an 11 year old one.